June 22  2008 Juan Pablo Montoya finished 6th at Infineon.

JPM started 21th, climbed up to 2nd place, and had a touch from behing from Ambrose. Full report to follow.

Montoya salvages sixth; has issue with Ambrose
By Joe Menzer, NASCAR.COMJune 23, 2008
11:25 AM EDT
SONOMA, Calif. -- Shortly after climbing from his No. 42 Dodge and getting cleaned up a bit, Juan Montoya emerged from his hauler after Sunday's Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Infineon Raceway and had only one question.
"Is it really true that Casey Mears is out of the 5 car?" Montoya asked.
Well, no. At least not yet.

But more on that later.
Meanwhile, reporters had some questions of their own after Montoya appeared to be in great position to possibly win a Sprint Cup series event at Infineon for the second consecutive year, only to see it slip away when he spun out on Lap 75 of the scheduled 110-lap event. Montoya fell back to as far as 18th after the incident -- which he blamed on rookie driver Marcos Ambrose -- but rallied over the event's final 35 laps to secure a solid sixth-place finish.

“I think we had a car to win. I just got screwed. ... After I got taken out, sixth was a great result.”
"Everybody here at Chip Ganassi Racing is working hard," said Montoya, who was coming off back-to-back 38th-place finishes in the previous two races. "We needed this. We needed a good finish. We didn't get the win, but we did get a good finish out of it. I had a lot of fun out there [Sunday]."

He didn't appear to be having much fun when Ambrose, who was making his Sprint Cup debut in the No. 21 Ford for Wood Brothers Racing, got inside of him in the hairpin turn, Turn 11, at Infineon. Montoya insisted that Ambrose brazenly charged into the turn too hard, causing the accident.

"I braked where I normally brake, and the 21 just dive-bombed like three cars," Montoya said. "When he went to turn, he couldn't slow down and I was the next one in line. So I just got punted by him. It's pretty frustrating.
"A guy like that who has never run here doesn't understand the give and take as much, and wants to prove he can race here. It's hard, because guys like that just want to prove themselves. I just ended up on the bad end of that deal."

Ambrose said he felt bad about the incident, but stopped short of taking all the blame.
"I feel really bad about that," Ambrose said. "I was just trying to pass [the No. 26 Ford of Jamie] McMurray. He squeezed me hard like he should. We got in there pretty deep and hard side by side. Montoya just must not have realized we were down there, and he came down in there. I couldn't have stopped any more. It's unfortunate, but it's just the way racing goes."

Montoya rallied from there to claim only his second top-10 finish of the season. He finished second at Talladega on April 27, and was 12th in points at that time.
He had dropped all the way to 22nd by the time he arrived at Infineon, but picked up three spots and moved to 19th by finishing sixth Sunday. He thought he could have challenged eventual winner Kyle Busch for the victory if the incident with Ambrose hadn't occurred.

“We got in there pretty deep and hard side by side. ... I couldn't have stopped any more. It's unfortunate, but it's just the way racing goes."”
MARCOS AMBROSE

"I think we had a car to win. When I pushed hard, I could run the same pace as Kyle. I just backed off a little bit," said Montoya, whose only Sprint Cup victory came at Infineon as a rookie last year. "Kyle had a really good car, but I think I would have had something for him. We could run pretty close to the same lap times as him when I really pushed. I just got screwed."

Montoya's spin brought out a caution. On the ensuing restart, Montoya started 14th and fell even farther back very quickly -- making his ultimate rally to sixth all the more impressive in the end.
"After the spin, on the restart, I was passed by like four cars. Just to get going, I spun the hell out of the tires -- and it killed me," Montoya said. "I left a lot of forward bite out there and had no traction. I think I lost a lot of it on that spin.

"But I still had a lot of fun. We had some really good racing with [Dale Earnhardt Jr.] there, and everybody else around me."

Later, Montoya survived another close call when Kevin Harvick rammed into the back of McMurray, who then clipped Tony Stewart. Montoya narrowly avoided disaster and drove through the mess.

"That was a close one. I saw them, and I started slowing to break just a little bit earlier. The 20 [of Stewart] was spinning his tires as I was going through him, and he just barely hit me -- but it didn't do much damage," Montoya said.

"After I got taken out, sixth was a great result. I was [almost] 20th in line. We could have maybe won the race or finished second -- or we could have ended up in one of those big wrecks like everyone else was. So it was one of those deals where you could be lucky or you could be very unlucky."

Then he launched into one more attack on Ambrose.

"It's hard because the guy's got a lot of talent. But that's a last-lap move. You don't do that so early," Montoya said. "You've got to learn to pass one-by-one. You don't try to get three cars in one braking area, because you're going to punt someone.

"They told me, 'He's coming, he's coming, he's coming.' And I moved out. I gave him room for a car length. But he was coming in so fast he just got right up against me. It was pretty stupid, but what can you say?"

That was Montoya's second question of the interview session. The answer to his first is that, yes, it appears Mears' days as driver of the No. 5 Chevrolet for Hendrick Motorsports may be numbered -- and that, yes, the combination of veteran Mark Martin and current Nationwide driver Brad Keselowski is rumored to be replacing Mears in the car at season's end.

But that is a story for another day. Meanwhile, how in the heck did Montoya come to hear the hottest rumor in the garage so quickly after he just spent nearly three hours negotiating the 12 turns that make up Infineon Raceway?

"Someone came and gave me some gossip," he said, grinning. "There's nothing like some good gossip."